T-Mobile’s new iPhone 5 is an unlocked, tweaked AT&T phone

The hardware has support for T-Mobile's AWS bands so you can enjoy LTE.

T-Mobile officially announced that it would be selling the iPhone 5 as well as the 4S and 4 models on Tuesday. Lots of people wondered, though, to what degree Apple tailored the iPhone 5's hardware for the carrier, or if they could use their existing iPhones on T-Mobile's network. Well, according to an Apple representative who spoke to Engadget, T-Mobile's iPhone 5 will be a tweaked version of the A1428 model, which AT&T currently uses.

That tweaked version includes support for T-Mobile's Advanced Wireless Services-based network (AWS). But AT&T customers can't just hop networks: “Sadly, Apple affirmed to us that it's not something that can be enabled via a simple software update for A1428 iPhone units already in circulation.” Engadget reported. “To say that another way, existing iPhone 5 owners on AT&T cannot simply apply a software patch to have AWS support added. You'll need to buy a new phone next month.”

Still, the phones that will go to market on April 12 will be sold unlocked, so users could conceivably hop between the two American carriers (and other global carriers) as much as they like after they've purchased that new phone. Apple will sell the modified A1428 iPhone 5 for full retail price starting April 12 as well.

MacRumors added: “Apple plans to phase out the existing A1428 hardware in favor of the new version, which means future phones from AT&T might also ship with AWS support included.”

Fantastic. After 2 years away, I might even switch back to T-Mobile. Just got this phone in January, so I'd have to way the cost of an early termination fee against any potential savings, plus see what data share plans T-Mobile has, as I'm currently a smartphone+tablet subscriber, and am looking to add a second tablet very soon.

I'll mosey on over to T-Mobile's site for a lookaround, but any details anyone has are much appreciated.

Having bought an unlocked A1428 (64GB, no less) to run on T-Mobile in December, I find this news quite disappointing. I guess I could always sell and buy another T-Mobile version. Hopefully, T-Mobiles spectrum re-farming will make this moot.

BTW, I'd also read that only the T-Mobile version will have HD Voice enabled.

I think this will end up being an important movement over the coming years.

I've always gotten new phones for free on contract. It has traditionally made sense that if you intend to spend $X/month on a mobile service, and always will, you might as well commit to 24 months and get a free phone. It didn't used to make sense to buy them outright.

That's changing. Here in Australia plans that "qualify" for a phone subsidy, even if they don't 100% cover it, are now more expensive than "BYO plans". There's also the question of qualifying plans getting more expensive in absolute terms. You have to sign up for a plan with a lot of inclusions - things like unlimited calls and 3GB of data - that end up being expensive enough for carriers to offer subsidised phones.

I properly assessed my requirements, and found a $30 plan with 1GB of data is fine. To get a subsidised iPhone 5 here you have to pay at least $70/month. Sure the plan has more inclusions but who cares? It doesn't take long to save the $800 to buy it outright. My first phone contract for a 3310 was $30/month, back in 2001.

T-Mobile is going to change this equation in the US now. Bite the bullet with up front cost, and be rewarded by paying for a more modest plan. Plus it makes it easier to buy the new shiny every year, without another 12 months of contract hanging over your head!

Hmm.. I wonder if this means Canadian AWS carriers like WIND will get the same device.

This is exactly what I was thinking. I don't particularly care for the iPhone (Android user), but that they can carry it would be amazing as it would get them some of the iPhone market share that Rogers, Bell and Telus currently enjoy.

Rooting for the underdog, competition in the marketplace and all that...

Well, I'll be. I have to acknowledge that I was one of the nay-sayers who didn't believe this day would come; I was completely certain that Apple would never-ever release a T-Mobile AWS compatible phone. Color me pleasantly surprised.

I guess technology moves forward, breaking through those "never-evers"... and we all reap the benefits.

Well, I'll be. I have to acknowledge that I was one of the nay-sayers who didn't believe this day would come; I was completely certain that Apple would never-ever release a T-Mobile AWS compatible phone. Color me pleasantly surprised.

I guess technology moves forward, breaking through those "never-evers"... and we all reap the benefits.

I doubt they would have actually made a T-Mobile-specific model. In this case, I believe the Qualcomm chip in the iPhone 5 has always natively supported AWS - it simply wasn't approved/enabled until now.

Well this sucks. I was hoping the iphone users wouldn't get the high speed service. Now T-mob will be as crappy as AT$T. Iphone users are total data hogs. This is not a theory but a fact. Here, let me give you a link so you don't congest the network talking to Siri:

Despite the coverage limitations of T-Mobile's network I think this may be the way to go. Being able to switch carriers at anytime takes all of the risk out of the equation.

Well yeah if you buy the phone outright... otherwise you are still in a contract with a locked phone...

No, T-mobile has done away with contracts. They will extend you credit so you can pay for your phone in installments. That's not a contact. You can switch carriers at any time without a penalty. Whether you still owe them money for the phone is a separate issue. If you want your phone unlocked you have to pay it off in full first. Still, not a contract.

Despite the coverage limitations of T-Mobile's network I think this may be the way to go. Being able to switch carriers at anytime takes all of the risk out of the equation.

Well yeah if you buy the phone outright... otherwise you are still in a contract with a locked phone...

You must have missed the bit about T-Mobile not doing contracts anymore, as well as the phone being sold unlocked.

The phone is ONLY unlocked after you paid the phone off... You are not locked into any contract on your service, but you are on the phone if you do not buy it outright.

Quote:

On T-Mobile’s new no-contract plan, users have the option to either pay full price up-front for the iPhone or pay a smaller down-payment, along with a 24-month payment plan of $20 per month to pay off the phone. The 16GB iPhone 5 starts at $99.

To be clear, if a subscriber chooses to pay a the $99 up-front at first, that subscriber will still be under a 20-month contract until the phone is paid for. However, that contract won’t apply to the wireless service, which is charged on a monthly basis with not many strings attached.

Doing more or using a limited resource poorly? Take podcasts for instance. I download all mine over wifi, even though I have a grandfathered unlimited data plan. I just don't abuse the priviledge. Unfortunately for every nice person like me, T-mob will be plagued with a hundred iphone web hogs. I find the thought of sharing the data highway with these whiny ADHD iphone twerps annoying.

Ah, OK, so this isn't really about having an intelligent discussion, it's about seeing how many iPhone insults you can fit into one thread. I actually don't much care for that game.

Doing more or using a limited resource poorly? Take podcasts for instance. I download all mine over wifi, even though I have a grandfathered unlimited data plan. I just don't abuse the priviledge. Unfortunately for every nice person like me, T-mob will be plagued with a hundred iphone web hogs. I find the thought of sharing the data highway with these whiny ADHD iphone twerps annoying.

Ah, OK, so this isn't really about having an intelligent discussion, it's about seeing how many iPhone insults you can fit into one thread. I actually don't much care for that game.

It's amusing, because his comments are pretty much poster candidates for whiny ADHD twerps.

Doing more or using a limited resource poorly? Take podcasts for instance. I download all mine over wifi, even though I have a grandfathered unlimited data plan. I just don't abuse the priviledge. Unfortunately for every nice person like me, T-mob will be plagued with a hundred iphone web hogs. I find the thought of sharing the data highway with these whiny ADHD iphone twerps annoying.

And they'll get knocked down to dialup or single-chanel ISDN speed when they hit their plan cap like everybody else. T-mobile is very up front about their throttling caps. That complete honesty is why I'm using T-Mobile for $60 on my new Nexus 4 instead of Straight Talk for $45 (who with access to both T-Mobile and AT&T towers might provide the best GSM coverage in the US just by reselling everybody). And honestly who cares about the extra speed, even 3g can chew through a cap by streaming a couple hours of netflix if you've got a clean connection and low contention. If anything 4g makes your life easier by reducing the burst length whenever an app talks out for less contention.

So many journalists haven't yet grasped how this new (to the US) unsubsidised phone business model really compares to the subsidized model. I've read several articles today on other websites that do a good job of outlining what it means for T-Mobile customers ($100 up front , minimum $50/month for the plan plus $20/month for 24 months to pay off the phone, making the phone portion of those 24 months worth of bills cost $580), but then in the next sentence they say that other carriers only charge you $200 for the phone. This is a meaningless comparison unless you include a comparison of plans and their costs. Using their flawed logic, T-Mobile wins because they only charge you $100 for the phone.

Either way, you're paying for the phone. It's just a matter of T-Mobile being more transparent about it now.

For me, as a current Android user and T-Mobile customer, nothing is going to beat the combination of these no contract plans and a $350-400 Nexus. I can't imagine a phone that costs $200 more meeting my needs any better.

Incidentally, to prospective iPhone buyers (actually any phone, but this is an iPhone thread) looking to switch to T-Mobile (and that includes me at the end of this year): supposedly Qualcomm is going to release an 'all world' radio chipset later this year that should theoretically work on almost every network, including China Mobile's weirdo protocols. This will likely be used in the successor to the iPhone 5.

If you can check your buying impulses for another nine months you might be able to buy One Phone To Rule Them All (provided it uses this Qualcomm setup) and then maybe coast for a few years longer before upgrading again.

If you live in the area where T-Mobile got around to putting 1900MHz HSPA+ network, then you'll enjoy a faster (up to 14.4Mbps, theoretically) 3G speed. There have already been reports of existing iPhone users switching to T-Mo and getting "3G' show up instead of "E" for some time.

A1428 supports Band 4 AWS for AT&T already. And to my knowledge, this is the same band T-Mobile's LTE runs on. So the existing A1428 users on AT&T can switch to T-Mobile, and with proper carrier profile installed, LTE support is enabled:

So if you're living in the area where T-Mobile has LTE service online, you do NOT need to buy the updated version to enjoy the 4G speeds. Just a software patch is needed.

Then what's this "cannot simply apply a software patch to have AWS support added" that T-Mobile is talking about? It's far likely to be for 3G (WCDMA / UMTS / HSPA).

We have seen that iPhones never supported AWS band for 3G. This is the prime reason the users switching to T-Mobile were stuck at EDGE speeds until late last year, when the company started adding 1900MHz HSPA+ network, which is compatible with iPhones.

Adding AWS band support to 3G radio would definitely mean revised hardware, i.e. something that can't be tacked on with software update. So what T-Mobile representative said makes far more sense if this was the case.

I still maintain that, eventually, the US phone market will morph into the European markets.

At that point you can either get a contract (18 or 24 months) to avoid high upfront costs or bring your own and have 3 tiers of voice/data/SMS (say $20, $40 and $60 per month) to pick from.

Once your contract ends, you're free to shift to a SIM only deal - either with the same carrier or move to a new carrier.

The only fly in the ointment is various incompatible bands and technology that your carriers all use. However that will be solved by technology over time, either because all phones will support all bands or because you've eventually moved onto a technology that is in line with the rest of the world.

Given the mess that is LTE bands though, the latter might be a rather long time - but it'll get there eventually and your grandchildren will think it odd that you couldn't buy a phone in Europe and not use it with all the carriers in the US.

If you live in the area where T-Mobile got around to putting 1900MHz HSPA+ network, then you'll enjoy a faster (up to 14.4Mbps, theoretically) 3G speed. There have already been reports of existing iPhone users switching to T-Mo and getting "3G' show up instead of "E" for some time.

I can vouch for this. Changed from AT&T to T-Mobile prepaid last month and have 3G on my unlocked iPhone 4 in Las Vegas.

Coverage is good enough for me, especially considering I only pay $30 a month for 100 minutes, unlimited text and unlimited data (5gb at 3G speeds). I don't talk much so the 100 minutes is fine for me. There are some areas around town that drop back to EDGE but I've noticed that is mostly when moving. In my apartment I get full bars and solid 3G all the time. I have no complaints.

What this article fails to mention is the monthly price for the iPhone. Qualifying customers with T-Mobile's Simple Choice Plan can grab an iPhone 5 for $99.99 down and $20 per month for 24 months. When all is said and done, you will have paid $579.99 for the device. T-Mobile’s Simple Choice Plan starts with a base rate of $50 per month with 500MB of 4G data, so you are paying $70 a month before tax and fees are added or overage charges. This is a more expensive plan than the other carriers, and only those who are math impaired would choose T-Mobile over ATT, Verizon or Sprint.

What this article fails to mention is the monthly price for the iPhone. Qualifying customers with T-Mobile's Simple Choice Plan can grab an iPhone 5 for $99.99 down and $20 per month for 24 months. When all is said and done, you will have paid $579.99 for the device. T-Mobile’s Simple Choice Plan starts with a base rate of $50 per month with 500MB of 4G data, so you are paying $70 a month before tax and fees are added or overage charges. This is a more expensive plan than the other carriers, and only those who are math impaired would choose T-Mobile over ATT, Verizon or Sprint.

I thought there were no overage charges. They just get throttled down after 500mb.